Erwin Liu is the CEO of a fledgling Chinese startup, and he’s been the happy recipient of free chips from Intel.

“Whenever I went to Intel’s offices, they would always give us some free samples,” he said.

Liu’s company, CEIN Biotechnology, which develops finger vein scanners, is just one among the many Chinese tech startups Intel is courting.

In the battle for chip supremacy, the U.S. tech giant has been trying to dig deep into China’s hardware industry, and ensure that not just big vendors use its technology, but small emerging players too.

On Wednesday, Intel held its annual developers conference in Shenzhen, China, at a time when rival ARM-based chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek have been all the rage.

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